Media Commentator - A.D.Coleman
An excerpt from
an introduction by A.D. Coleman "There is No Not Art"
Some thoughts on Art in Public and "Art
in Public"
What Shustak
provides on this CD-ROM is an absolutely indiscriminate, idiosyncratic
survey of what he calls "Art in Public"
from the South Island of New Zealand in the 1990's. By indiscriminate
I mean that it purposefully makes no distinction whatsoever between
governmentally commissioned public statuary of historic figures, corporately
sponsored works of creative art commissioned for public display, mass-produced
or one-off grocery-store and used-car dealership
promotional installations, billboards, mural art,
traffic signage, graffiti, visible tattoos on human skin and other
forms of "body art," face painting on children at carnivals, T-shirt
decoration, the mechanized horses and other inexpensive "rides" provided
by stores to keep the little ones occupied, playing tenor sax for
spare change in the street and the chanting and drumming of Hare Krishna
devotees. In its absolute clearly deliberate
refusal to distinguish between them, it hypothesizes them
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all as pertinent to the concept of "Art
in Public" a logical extension of the Duchampian premise.
In other words, Shustak here simply ignores the ongoing
international debates over the aesthetics of "outsider" art (whose
logical corollary, "insider" art, surely merits more discussion
than it receives), naif or "folk" art, "art in public" vs. "Public
art," "high" art vs. vernacular art, "quality vs. "kitsch," and the
rest of that elaborate discourse.
Shustak not only emulsifies all judgments regarding
quality and all distinctions between types of "Art in Public" but
also rejects the ostensibly ennobling strategy of a "high-art" photographic
style.
Instead, he applies to his
theme -- which is the unpretentious artistic activity of the average
citizen -an equally democratic method of report: the casual, informal
photographic style of mundane spectatorship, the snapshot attitude.
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P.O.Box 18624, Christchurch,
New Zealand
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Abstract, Academic, Academy, Advertisement,
Adviser, America, Amount, Animation, Architecture, Art, Artisan, Artist, Artistic,
Artistry, Artwork, Art Nouveau, Australia, Baroque, Beauty, Bicycles, Billboards,
Books, Brass, Business, Buskers, Camera, Catalogue, CD-ROM, Charts, Christchurch,
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Film, Fine Arts, Finesse, Fishing, Form, Frame, Freedom, Galleries, Geography,
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Type, Universe, University, Urban, Victory, Video, Visual, Wheels, Wisdom, Zoom
